Inspired by an English Country Garden #1

Last weekend  we had a lovely day out visiting a selection of gardens in the Hampshire village of Froyle, which were all open on the same day as part of the National Garden Scheme. Naturally Mark was in his element - you can read his report of the day and see his wonderful photos of some of the cottages and their gardens over on his blog. But while he was busy taking photos and gathering gardening ideas, I was picking up lot and LOTS of crafting inspiration, and this is the first of several posts featuring cards inspired by our outing.

Although the gardens were all very different, one feature they nearly all had in common was an area of traditional English country garden style planting, with bright, colourful flowers massed together. The size and beauty of some of the allium flowers really struck me, and this first card is inspired by them.

Although I have several allium flower stamps, only this one which is intended to be a dandelion clock could do justice to the huge, perfect spheres of colour that stood so proudly clear of all traces of foliage. I coloured the stamp with brush markers and completed the card with die cuts made from snippets of card to match the flowers. The trailing vine die cut was also chosen to represent the vines and creepers that climbed over almost every wall and trellis.

I'm playing along at Pixie's Snippets Playground  and also at Inkspirational challenges, where I've chosen the purple and green from the photo and also tried to represent the tranquillity and peace of the garden, which the girl in the picture is obviously enjoying!